It’s a sacrifice she has been willing to make while double-dribbling through the past five summers, pulling double-duty as head coach of both Canada’s national women’s team and the University of Saskatchewan Huskies women’s squad.

Although a bit of a golf enthusiast when she has the time, Thomaidis doesn’t remember the last time she played a round of outside of the annual fund-raising scramble for the Huskies women’s basketball program.

“No I don’t (remember). I golfed at our Huskie tournament and that was it,” says Thomaidis, fresh from capturing gold at the FIBA AmeriCup 2017 championship in Argentina where Canada defeated host Argentina 67-65 in the final. “My golf game is taking a hit, let’s put it that way.”

Not that she minds. Guiding Canada’s top women’s basketballers has its rewards too. Yes, it’s better than birdies.

“This is pretty awesome stuff, too,” she says. “I can golf later in life. You don’t get these (national assignment) opportunities coming around very often.”

Thomaidis and Team Canada returned back on Canadian soil at 5 a.m. Tuesday following a full day of travelling from Buenos Aires.

“It’s a long haul, my goodness,” points out Thomaidis, whose team finished seventh overall a year ago at the 2016 Rio Olympics. “Buenos Aires is at the bottom of the Earth, let me tell you. It was a great trip. We really enjoyed it.”

Thomaidis is in her fifth year as head coach of the senior team after spending 11 years as an assistant.

She says that, because she has done it for so long, it’s become part of her routine. She’s sort of used to it although, she admits, it does become “overwhelming at times,” especially given the incentives and expectations of both teams.

“With our national team, winning at the Olympic Games is essentially our goal now — being second-best isn’t good enough,” she says. “There’s an expectation for our team internationally.”

She credits Canada Basketball and the U of S for allowing her the opportunity to succeed.

“I’ve had tremendous help from the time I first started with Canada Basketball until now with the human resources, staff members, the professionals we have involved, have certainly helped to lessen the load in terms of responsibilities,” says Thomaidis. “Without that, and without the financial support from Own the Podium and the rest of our partners, it wouldn’t be possible for me to do it — it would just be too much.

“With me having a full-time assistant at the U of S, and the moral support I’ve been provided there, it makes it possible. Really, it takes a lot of co-ordination between Canada Basketball and the University of Saskatchewan to do all of this. I’m very, very appreciative of allowing me to do it.”

‘HUGE WIN’

Thomaidis says a second-straight AmeriCup win is “pretty huge” in that Canada had never won back-to-back FIBA Americas championships before and the only time Canada had won the championship was on Canadian soil twice when Canada hosted.

“It’s a huge challenge,” says Thomaidis, whose squad featured only six holdovers from Rio along with six newcomers, including former Huskie shooting guard Laura Dally.

The Canadian squad hadn’t been in that kind of environment for a very long time, playing for gold in a foreign country against the host team.

“I mean, the noise in there and the noise and atmosphere was just unbelievable,” says Thomaidis. “Nobody could hear a thing. The Argentinian team was certainly amped up for us and well prepared. It was fantastic for our young ones to experience something like that and I thought our veterans really stepped up and were composed with the game on the line.

“Winning it is huge. We want to consider ourselves an international team that can compete perennially on the world stage and to do that with the turnover that we had is huge. It was a pretty rewarding accomplishment.”

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